Poland’s new pro-European Union government has begun to wrestle control of the country’s state media and some other state agencies from the conservative party that consolidated its grip on them during their eight years in power.
ADVERTISEMENTPoland's new Cabinet moves to free state media from previous government's political control.
The Cabinet of Prime Minister Donald Tusk, which took office last week, said Wednesday it had fired the directors of the state television and radio outlets and the government-run news agency. It seeks to reestablish independent media in Poland in a legally binding and lasting way.
Tusk's government has made it a priority to restore objectivity and free expression in state media, which the previous government, under the Law and Justice party, used as aggressive propaganda tools, attacking Tusk and the opposition and spreading its eurosceptic views. During its rule, Law and Justice cut corners and ignored some procedures to gain control of the media supervisory bodies and of the key appointments as it tightened its grip.
The new government's first steps toward a return to media freedom were met with protest by Law and Justice Party leader Jarosław Kaczyński, top party figures and many of its lawmakers whom occupied buildings housing the offices and studios of state-run television TVP in the hopes that their supporters would come out to demonstrate in big numbers. A rally was called for later Wednesday and a few dozen people gathered.
“The party instructions are that all Law and Justice parliament members come here said Law and Justice Senator Marek Pek, “We must show through our presence that we are deeply against these lawless and brutal actions.”
Law and Justice issued a statement saying the actions of the new government were “illegal” and that the change of the leaderships of the media was done “unlawfully.”
The statement quoted Kaczynski, Poland's most powerful politician until recently, insisting that the protest is a, “defense of democracy because there is no democracy without media pluralism or a strong anti-government media. In any democracy, there must be strong anti-government media.”
But for years the Law and Justice government actively sought to discredit and eliminate from the market the TVN station that was highly critical of it.
There was no brutality involved Wednesday and the change of management was done in line with the law. Some police were deployed in front of the building, but their goal was to ensure calm, according to Warsaw police spokesman Sylwester Marczak.
On Tuesday, Polish lawmakers adopted a resolution presented by Tusk's government calling for the restoration of "legal order, objectivity and fairness” of TVP, Polish Radio and the PAP news agency.